PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds hits closed beta on 24th

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Battle Royale ’em ups and first-person Hunger Gamesers have become so popular that I once, er, briefly forgot that Battle Royale and The Hunger Games are novels and films. They’re last-man-standing affairs dunking loads of players into murderworlds to roam, loot, craft, and kill, kill, kill. One of the more notable Hungerers on the horizon is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds [official site] because it bears the name of the chap who designed Arma 3’s Battle Royale mod then helped on H1Z1: King of the Kill.

It’s due to enter closed beta on the 24th, the devs have now announced, then after about four weeks will launch into early access.

The devs say they had planned to launch the game fully after closed beta, but on reflection have decided to take a detour through early access for up to six months. They say it’s helpful for community-oriented development, yeah? Early access is also a place many Hungerers have stalled, unfinished, unbalanced, and buggy. That’s not an inherent problem of early access but I’d be a bit wary myself.

Anyway! PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a Battle Royale ’em up doing those Hunger Games things, with vehicles and all. It looks fairly pretty and polished as the genre goes. While many of these games are made by relatively inexperienced teams, Battlegrounds is being made by Tera devs Bluehole Studio. Have a peek at its shiny shininess in this new trailer:

The big draw Blue Hole are counting on — going by the name — is the involvement of PlayerUnknown. This is his third (second-and-a-half?) Hungerer so you’d hope he brings valuable insight to the genre’s problems? Or… maybe what I see as the problems, he might see as cornerstones. Dunno! RPS resident rowdy boys Brendan and Graham played King of the Kill and did not dig it. Maybe it’d be enough for an experienced studio to make a Hungerer to a high standard with little jank and wonk – and actually finish and launch it.

Oh, will you look at that – these dafties are so excited about announcing closed beta dates that they entirely forgot to say how people can sign up. You silly sausages!

10 Comments

Who is Playerunknown and how has he made three games in a genre that I thought only existed about 6 months ago?

I didn’t even realise that the Battle Royle games have suddenly become the new survival genre; millions of them, all very janky, yet inexplicably incredibly popular amongst a group whose main source of gaming is Twitch/Youtube. I’m suddenly feeling like my touch with the modern games industry is as update as my touch with modern music industry!

It would be nice to have a polished KOTH game in a “better” engine than RV4. As much as I can appreciate the RV4 engine technically I never found myself enjoying the combat or UI; the lack of polish on the mods certainly doesn’t help matters.

i feel like all these games are designed for streamers like lirik (who usually gets bored of a game in 2 days) or summit and when it falls from them all the other streamers play it until the next survival game comes out.

I wonder if EA/UBISOFT will ever attempt to make a massive survival game…or EA makes a starwars one